


Hold Fast to Dreams

by pandamug



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), The Unsleeping City
Genre: F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Listen I know where I am and I know where I’m going and who knows how we’re going to get there., No Lesbians Die, No beta we die like Arthur Augefort in s1e2, We will make the voyage of discovery together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29982072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandamug/pseuds/pandamug
Summary: SPOILERS FOR UNSLEEPING CITY CHAPTER 2 FINALEAfter the events of The Unsleeping City Chapter Two Finale, Josefina Gatsby and Heather Simos together: safe, happy, and in love and living in a beautiful converted loft in Nod with an incredible sound system. This is how they get there.
Relationships: Heather Simos/Tony Simos (mentioned), Josefina Gatsby/Heather Simos
Kudos: 7





	1. Harlem, 1929

**Author's Note:**

> Content note: In chapter 1 Josefina Gatsby acts rashly in a way that nods to suicidal ideation. In chapter 2 there are descriptions of a toxic relationship.
> 
> This isn't done yet but it's burning a hole in my prefrontal cortex and I can't do anything else until I at least try to get it out. It hasn't been beta'd and has barely been spell checked. I don’t usually write fic like this! Updates coming at least every day.

Facing dawn on the last night of her life, Josefina Gatsby stood on a deserted 145th Street Bridge, overlooking the Harlem River. She was dressed to impress -- her finest going out clothes threaded through with pearl and gold beaded accents, and shoes shimmering in the pre-dawn light, and she looked as she always did: her dark brown eyes sparkling and alive despite the nearly-black circles that surrounded them. Her skin was naturally a golden-dark umber, nearly glowing in the pre-dawn light, and her hair was slicked into a pixie cut with two curls standing out on her forehead. 

She hadn’t slept a wink in several days, possibly weeks, preferring to drift through Harlem’s night clubs full of hot jazz and cool dancing, Lindy hopping and drinking and smoking surrounded by strains of spellbinding poetry and laughter and joyful noise. 

When the parties ended around dawn each day, Josefina left the waking world behind and danced her way downtown -- all the way downtown, past Canarsie, where neighborhoods in the sixth borough lit up as the first tendrils of sunlight dappled the city sidewalks. The dancers and musicians turned in for the night in the waking world, filling the Dreaming with continued revelries. Music filtered into the morning air as the brightest stars of the Savoy, the Roseland, the Cotton Club, the partiers and the revelers lit up the streets of Nod with music and joy and laughter.

Instead of hopping the train to speed to deep downtown, Josefina had left the Savoy, waving jolly goodbyes to Frankie, Willamae, and Norma, and stopped here on the bridge to watch as the rosy fingers of dawn reflected their way across the Harlem river, pink sparkles of light flashing like flower petals floating in the water. 

She had passed through tiredness and exhaustion months ago. She couldn’t remember the last time she had dreamed her own dreams, preferring to visit the dreams of others in the Sixth Borough over chancing an encounter with the waking-world demons made manifest. She had left them behind her when she moved to New York City, and as far as she was concerned, they should stay buried and forgotten, banished from the Realm of Dream. 

(She did not stop to think what this might mean for her own well-being. She was too tired for that, preferring the light surreality of exhaustion to permeate every corner of her sleepless existence.)

Had she bothered to stop and think, she would not have remembered her last full night’s sleep. Nightmares had interrupted her natural rhythms for years before she became the Vox Phantasma, leading to bouts of extreme insomnia even before she could travel to the Dreaming while conscious. She had been catching sleep in tiny pockets here and there, mostly closing her eyes on the L Train headed downtown and letting the motion rock her to sleep for the time it took to travel to Nod. 

Standing on the bridge, Josefina looked up to see the first rays of a summer’s day catching the sparkles on her dress, reflecting golden twinkles onto the water. Her limbs felt heavy and light at the same time, and her feet were swollen in her shoes from several nights of heavy dancing. She couldn’t slow down, she couldn’t stop, and she knew that the next train to Nod wouldn’t be departing from the 145th Street Station for another half hour. Suddenly she felt very tired and very, very alone.

In this moment, away from the crowds and the glitter, despair set in. Nothing mattered. Maybe nothing would ever matter again. 

As she watched, the sparkles on the water deepened, organizing themselves into distant street lamps and lit-up signs. Josefina realized she was looking at a map of Nod’s neighborhood of Harlem below, picked out in tiny pinpricks of light. She knew the train was the safest way to visit Nod, but she was sure, just certain, that if she aimed just right she could get there from here. 

Josefina took a deep breath and climbed out between two trestles, tucking her short skirt between her knees and casting Feather Fall on herself. She steadied herself for just a moment, looking around, wondering if this was truly a good idea. It wasn’t, but the alternative -- walking back on sore feet to the train station, waiting for the next train to Nod, and riding it all the way downtown before making her way back Uptown to the clubs she could see laid out below -- seemed like torture.

She took a deep breath and jumped. 

When she reached the edge of Nod, blown by a wind or perhaps, despairing, falling there herself, she began to walk into the deeper dreaming.


	2. Staten Island, 1986

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heather Simos is going out!
> 
> CW: description of a toxic relationship.

Heather Simos could not believe her luck. All her life she had known that something magical was out there, waiting, just beyond her reach. She had been the kind of kid who jumped into puddles with both feet, and she was the kind of adult who never quite stopped believing that Fairyland could be just on the other side. 

Two days ago, on her way home from the thrift store, she’d seen the shadow of a gray kid in the reflection of every single storefront she passed. It had been raining all day, and when she saw the puddle that looked like it reflected just a little too much of the evening sun, well. Heather Simos had had no choice but to jump in with both feet.

Over dinner that night she had tried to tell Tony what she’d seen, tried to explain to him the wonder and magic of this new land she was a part of. This leadership she’d been granted! She was a Vox Phantasma, and even though she wasn’t precisely sure what that meant yet, she was so excited. 

Tony had barely looked her in the eye. He was gruff, gruffer than normal, and he had gone out to his poker game that night, even though he usually played poker on Fridays and it was a Wednesday.

Even though he was her husband, she often felt like she didn’t quite understand Tony. He could be all lovey-dovey one day and then angry and hard to reach the next, blaming her for every little inconvenience that came his way. They had met at a concert a year ago. Tony was working security and Heather was dancing and scream-singing her heart out right up against the stage. He bought her a drink that night and dinner the next and the rest, well, the rest was history. 

These days, Tony didn’t much like it when she went out alone -- it was for her safety, he’d said -- and he never wanted to go out. He didn’t like her friends either, so Heather mainly stayed home at night, quietly singing along with the radio while she prepared dinner. It was fine, but she missed her old life. She missed the energy of a nightclub, the feedback between performers and audience, the vibrant voice of the crowd all singing together as one. She missed coming home and falling into bed bone-tired and hoarse and falling deep, deep into sleep.

She hadn’t been sleeping much lately. At night she mostly just stared at the ceiling and listened to Tony snore. It was fine. Mostly.

It was Friday, and Tony was out at his regular poker game tonight. Heather Simos was going _out._

She put on her favorite outfit -- her mint green Doc Martins, the new dress with the flouncy skirt she had just gotten at the thrift store, and her favorite denim vest. 

She could already feel the forgotten flutter of excitement within her chest, the throbbing drumbeat and wail of an electric guitar. 

Heather hopped the ferry to Manhattan and caught the L Train, riding it as far as it would take her, and felt the fist around her heart start to unclench. She was free.


	3. Deep Dreaming

Just like always, Heather went too fast and too far, and, just like always, she was in over her head before she could stop it. 

Nod was all color and light and dream and excitement and before she knew it she was running and jumping, leaping higher than she ever had before, like the street below her feet had turned into a trampoline. The gray orphan was following behind her, giggling at her exuberance. She jumped, up up up and she felt her hands glow warm and then she was flying. Flying!

Pink clouds surrounded her like cotton candy and she kicked her feet like she was doing a backstroke. This was better than anything -- better than drugs, better than booze, better than seeing the Bangles at the Palladium from four feet away.

“Yippee!” she cried. “C’mon kiddo, let’s go further up and further in!”

“Heather, no, wait!” they shouted, “let’s go back!”   
“Not on your life, kiddo, let’s go!” she said, ricocheting off a billboard featuring a neon blue roller skate that grimaced as she bounced off its eyelets. “I can see my house from up here!” she said, pointing back at Staten Island. She hadn’t realized she’d gotten this close to the edge of the city.

“Heather, no!” Nod cried, just as something else reached out a hand toward her.

“Heather, yes,” this new being whispered to her, a startling tendril of gray snaking through the 

Nod’s cries were cut off suddenly, almost as if a door had slammed shut behind her, Everything went gray. Everything stopped. Nothing mattered.

Heather drifted down. Even though there wasn’t any ground, she was done flying. She trudged forward, one foot in front of the other, the toes of her boots dragging against tendrils of the gray.

Time stretched and thinned. She walked for a week, two, a month, ten, a year, or no time at all. Space held no meaning, time even less so. Tony had been right about this. It was foolish to think this would be different, that she could be different here. She was foolish. She felt very small and very, very alone.

Except… she wasn’t alone. Someone else was here.

Over in the distance, where before there had been only gray and gray and gray and gray, something sparkled. Some _ one _ shone. There, the only feature in the void, sat a young Black woman with hair slicked into a bob and a gorgeous evening gown. Her slender shoulders slumped and her eyes were fixed on her hands in her lap.

“Hello?” Heather called out, and the hoarse sound of her own voice surprised her.

It surprised the woman too, who jerked so hard in surprise she nearly toppled over. 

“H- hello?” the other woman said, her voice so low it could have been a whisper. Had there been any noise at all in the gray, it would have drowned her out.

Heather felt a small tendril of the fog in her head lift. 

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Heather. I guess I’m new here.”

“Nice to meet you, Heather,” the other woman said, voice only faltering a little. “My name’s Josefina. I think I’m new here too.” She looked thoughtful. “But maybe not.”

“It’s kind of hard to tell,” Heather said. “Does anything ever change?”

“No,” Josefina said. “At least… not until now.” 

A small smile teased at Josefina’s lips, and all of a sudden Heather was very aware of how beautiful this stranger was. Her eyes were a beautiful deep brown framed with long lashes. As she stood up, Heather saw Josefina was short -- barely more than five feet tall, which made Heather, who stood at five feet nine inches, feel a little like a giant. 

“Say,” Heather said, her voice light and teasing, “what’s a lovely lady like you doing in a place like this?”

Josefina grinned, and her smile was the most lovely thing Heather had ever seen. 

“I could ask you the same question,” she said, gesturing around. “I’ve been here the whole time. Where did you come from?”

“I walked from…” Heather trailed off, gesturing futilely in the direction she thought she’d walked from. It looked exactly the same as every other direction. “That bit of gray over there,” she said, picking a place to point mostly at random. 

“Oh?” Josefina asked. “And what’s it like over there?”

“Why don’t you come walk with me and find out?” Heather asked.

Josefina laughed. It was a small laugh, more like a sigh or a cough than anything, but something told Heather that nothing had made Josefina laugh for a very, very long time. As Josefina walked over to her, slowly, legs a little shaky like she was walking on pins and needles, something deep within Heather shifted. Josefina made Heather feel… well, like nothing had ever made her feel before. And feeling anything at all in the gray was new. She liked it.

They set off together, more or less back the way Heather had come. She didn’t mind one bit.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Langston Hughes poem Dreams.


End file.
